


Both a Beginning and an End

by thewintertrash



Series: Mnemonic [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Brainwashing, Canon-Typical Violence, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Memory Loss, Mild Blood, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Suicide Attempt, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-02
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-24 11:24:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4917721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewintertrash/pseuds/thewintertrash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anagnorisis (noun) is a moment in a play or other work when a character makes a critical discovery, it originally meant recognition in its Greek context, not only of a person but also of what that person stood for.</p><p>Peripeteia (noun) a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances, especially in reference to fictional narrative.</p><p>-</p><p>For most people, stumbling onto an actual assassin in the middle of doing their job would be considered to be at the wrong place at the worst time imaginable.</p><p>Steve Rogers, however, wasn’t most people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Anagnorisis

**Author's Note:**

> This all started when I saw [this post](http://kototyph.tumblr.com/post/101884919078/imagine-present-day-no-serum-steve-as-an-actual), and thought, this would be a cool one shot to write.
> 
> 20k words and a shit ton of ideas later, I thought "fuck, I could make a whole series out of this." So, depending on how this goes, this will probably be part one in a series, because I hate myself like that.
> 
> Also completely unbeta'd, so if you see any glaring mistakes, please tell me.

For most people, stumbling onto an actual assassin in the middle of doing their job would be considered to be at the wrong place at the worst time imaginable.

Steve Rogers, however, wasn’t most people.

Although, to his defense, he hadn’t _actually_ known that it was an assassin when he first happened upon the scene. He was just minding his own business, weaving through some short cuts and alleyways on his way home from work, which he’d detoured from to buy some oil paint. All he saw was some hulking man, what he presumed to probably be a mugger, pushing around a woman with a baby in her arms down the alley. The only light came from what the streetlamps threw in from the main street, which wasn’t much, especially to Steve’s eyes, but he could at least make out the scraggly, shoulder length dark hair, a black mask that covered most of his face, and — was his left arm shining in the lamplight?

And, well, _naturally_ Steve couldn’t just stand idly by while such injustice was going on. So he did the only sensible thing to do, in his mind: he ran farther down the alley, grabbed the nearest trash can lid, and hurled it at the attacker. 

“Hey!” he yelled trying to get the mugger to back away from the woman and her child. The man caught the lid with his left hand, which is surprising enough, but it also didn’t make the right sound. It sounded… metallic?

Steve didn’t have long to wonder before the man turned around and hurled the trashcan lid back at Steve at a much faster velocity than should be possible. Steve just barely managed to dodge it and ducked behind a dumpster, where the lid hit right where he had been standing so hard that it actually dented it before it ricocheted away, bent in half.

 _Holy shit,_ he thought, staring wide eyed at the folded lid. This wasn’t just some common mugging, he realized. Oh no, this was much worse.

This had to be some kind of super villain. Of course. And it wasn’t just him imagining things — what he saw in the short glimpse he got was that his entire arm _was_ metal. All he’d wanted to do that winter night was to buy a tube of royal blue paint and make it home before his throat closed up. But no, apparently that was too much to ask.

He swallowed. He spent the first twenty-six years of his life taking on people at least twice his size and he wasn’t about to know better now. Bucky always said he was too stupid to learn to run away from a fight, anyway.

And, well, Steve never did like bullies. Even if they were cyborg super villains.

He lunged at a nondescript plastic bag with some trash stuffed in it and turned and threw it at the villain — and _holy shit_ , he was much closer than Steve had anticipated.

Steve backed away as the other man advanced, grabbing another trashcan and heaving it in front of him. It did little to slow him down, of course, but Steve expected that. He just needed to be big enough nuisance that he gave the woman and her child enough of a window to escape.

“You should be fuckin’ ashamed of yourself! Trying to hurt a mother and her child, you are the worst kind of villain there is!”

The man was much faster than Steve. One second he was ten feet away then suddenly his metal hand clamped around Steve’s neck and was lifting him off the ground.

All the asthma attacks in Steve’s life could not have prepared him for someone literally crushing his throat. That didn’t mean he was about to give up, even though spots dotted his vision and his legs were started to prickle and oh god the _pain —_ though if there was anything Steve was good at ignoring, it was pain. He still struggled with all he had. He pawed at the metal arm, but it was unyielding. He kicked out with his feet, but even at full strength it was probably just mildly irritating to super villains. Steve knew he was small, but the man was holding him with one arm like it was nothing. Just how strong was this guy? But this couldn’t be the end. Not today.

So he did the only thing he could think of: he reached in his pocket, opened the tube of oil paint and then squirted and smeared it across the dark eyes of the mask. His oxygen deprived brain rationalized that the cyborg villain needed to see to keep strangling him. It wouldn’t work, obviously, if anything he probably just irritated the hell out of this madman.

But then the strangest thing happened.

_The man let go._

Steve dropped to the ground like a sack of bricks, the sudden rush of air disorienting. He scooted back a few feet as best he could with numb and tingly limbs, gasping and coughing his lungs out. He was, at least, able to study the man with the metal arm better now that he had a moment where he wasn’t dying and black wasn’t clouding his vision. He was taller and much bigger than Steve, dressed in all black with a mask and goggles covering his face. He was equipped with what looked like a small arsenal; multiple guns and knives were attached to in his utility belt and thigh holsters, and that was all he could see sticking out of his pockets. He even had an automatic rifle with what looked like a sniper scope attached to it slung onto his back.

It hit Steve, then. He didn’t just interrupt a mugging or even a super villain — he interrupted an assassin doing their job.

This was, hands down _,_ the _stupidest_ thing he’d ever done. This even beat the times he falsified his information so he could try for the army (again). If Bucky could see him now… he’d probably pop a blood vessel, raise him from the dead after the assassin killed him, and kill him again personally.

The assassin (Steve was still trying to wrap his head around how much shit he just stepped in) reached up with his right hand, his human one, and pulled off his now paint covered goggles.

The blue contrasted vibrantly against the pale skin of his hand. Oil pant wouldn’t dry for weeks without an agent, and even then it still took days, so it rubbed off easily onto his skin. The man stared at the smears of paint on his fingers for a moment, his eyebrows knitted together like he was confused, which, that’s just, well that just didn’t make any sort of sense. He did look more human now that Steve could see his eyes, even if it was just barely in the dark.

The moment broke. The man reached in his side clip and Steve ducked and curled in on himself on instinct as two shots rang out.

Steve let out the breath he’d been holding — wait a second, he still had breath to hold? That was strange, because the dead didn’t breathe. He whipped his head back up but he was alone in the alley. Two bullets were buried in the ground at his feet. Warning shots.

What the hell. Assassins didn’t give out warning shots.

He got up on wobbly legs after putting the tube of paint back in his pocket, wondering if he should feel grateful or not that he was still able to move. Regardless, he decided that if the assassin were going to go anywhere, it would be after the mother and child. He felt sick thinking that the man actually got paid to kill them. Somebody actually offered him a job to shoot these two innocent people — one being a _child_ who couldn’t have been more than a toddler — point blank and the man actually took the money. He couldn’t believe it, that someone could be so cruel.

So he stumbled out the way the mother and child would have gone. It wasn’t late, only about half past eight, but it was so dark out already. People were still out, families, teens, business people, all bundled in big winter coats and scarves, but he couldn’t see who he was looking for. Quick look or not, he didn’t see the mother’s clothes, and unless she took off her burnt orange hijab, she should have been easy to spot. He hoped with everything he had that was a good thing and meant they got away.

Which was what he should be doing right now, he thought as he touched his throat. He was going to have some awful bruises, which, okay, what was new? Steve didn’t have any illusions that he was safe; he interrupted — and hopefully stopped — an assassination. If anything, he saw enough to identify the man. There weren’t many white, six foot, 200 pound males in their late twenties/early thirties who had metal left arms.

He’d forgotten his phone at home so he couldn’t even call for help. Should he risk asking someone around for their phone? What if they somehow traced the call back? Were there still any payphones left in the city of New York?

The fact of the matter was that he had no idea what lengths this assassin would go to make sure that he wasn’t found. There weren’t exactly a lot of people with metal left arms. What would he do to prevent word getting out?

He’d call when he got home, he decided, when he realized everyone around him started looking more like targets than people. He wasn’t going to involve anyone else in this if he didn’t have to. Maybe he’d be able to figure out who to call, too. The police weren’t equipped to handle this. But who else could he call? The FBI? SHIELD? The goddamn X-Men?

He headed quickly as he could manage toward the subway even though his throat still burned and his chest felt like it was going to crush in on itself. Steve reasoned if he got on several different trains and buses randomly, it would be incredibly difficult to follow him. He just hoped that the assassin didn’t have something like a super sense of smell or could track him via something else. Who knew what these super people could do? It seemed every other day there was some new one was on the cover of the Daily News.

Getting on the bus that would take him away from his apartment was a relief because he finally got to sit down and just focus on trying to breathe. _Breathe in for four, hold for four, release for four. Breath in for four, hold for four, release for four. Breathe in for four…_

He did keep up to date with the news, about all the new super villains and heroes that come out of the woodwork. Even if you lived under a rock you still heard about Captain America — he was in the history books for fuck’s sake. Everyone knew about how he fought and died in World War II battling Nazis and their evil Hydra science division. Steve was even a part of a website that kept a running list of new heroes and villains, a sort of Super People Wikipedia, if you will, just so the public could try and keep track of them all. It wasn’t the only one out there, but he tried going beyond just vague descriptions and stats — he also helped write instructions on how best to survive if anyone encountered the villains. Getting sick so often meant he had hours to kill while being bedridden, so he spent a good chunk of his time studying their various fighting styles from footage and reports. He knew for a fact that it had helped a couple of people and no, they didn’t have to know what he looked like to take his advice, and he’d personally fight anyone who said his body type somehow made his tactics invalid.

He struggled to think of any of the villains he knew of that fit the description of the man he saw. None did, of course, but Steve hadn’t been particularly optimistic about that. It did make dealing with it harder, since he had no idea what this mystery assassin could do. Maybe if he survived this he’d write a page on him, with the advice of “do not engage unless martial arts expert or gun repellent. Also watch out for the metal arm, it’ll take your breath away.”

He tried to time crossing different public transportation, so if he got off there was another train or bus waiting for him. His asthma was so bad at this point it hurt to walk, which really sucked since he had also forgotten his inhaler. Of all the nights to forget it! And he _knew_ it would be so much worse in the frigid winter air. From now on, it was going to be glued to his hand. And the worst part is that he had no idea if this would work, or if the assassin was even bothered by killing in public. He was just going off the assumption that if he had dragged the woman and her child along a dark alley were no one should have seen them, then he probably didn’t want to be seen. He wasn’t amongst the known super villains, as far as Steve knew.

There was a sniper scope on the rifle, Steve remembered suddenly. If Steve were in public, did he even need to be seen? Or be within a mile radius of him? A chill went down his spine.

Just because Steve was used to feeling small and helpless, it didn’t mean he liked the feeling.

Steve shouldn’t have even been there in the first place. Really, it was just plain dumb (horrible) luck that led him into the dark alley off in the middle of the Downtown Brooklyn. He was still far from his place, out in the East Flatbush neighborhood.

He always took some short cuts back to the subway, unconcerned if someone tried to mug him. All he had on him was some paint, about a dollar in change, his keys, a ten-dollar watch on his wrist, and his bus pass, but that was hidden in an inside pocket. Steve knows he looked like an easy target, but the thing muggers didn’t expect was for this easy target to fight back.

So, common muggers he could deal with. Cyborg assassins? A little out of his league, he would admit that much.

He currently worked part time in a Mom & Pop shop that sold niche tourist-y type stuff, which was exactly as glamorous as it sounds. These side jobs were just temporary, he told himself a thousand times. He knew he believed that five years ago. Maybe he believed that four years ago, too. Unfortunately he needed to eat, and had bills to pay, and his paintings and drawings don’t sell as much as he would like, and oil paints were expensive as hell, so here he was, stuck in the same rut as he was in over five years ago.

It was not even close to what he wanted to do — he wanted to be in the army. Or a fireman. Or an ambulance worker. Anything where he could help people. (Bucky said that any job that would put his life on the line would be Steve’s perfect job.) He wanted to serve his country. Thousands of men and women were putting themselves in danger either at home or overseas, and he should be too. Unfortunately, no one would accept him, on a count of his asthma, and his tendency to get sick every few weeks like clockwork, and the fact that he was only just over a hundred pounds and could barely lift the equipment, and… well, pretty much everything about him was wrong for that type of work. Except his attitude, of course. One army officer he talked to said that Steve was like a little yorkie dog trying to pretend he was a Rottweiler: small dog, huge personality.

He and the other man there had laughed Steve out of the building. It had been humiliating, to say the least. Bucky told him he was lucky he wasn’t being shipped off. Said he would be more useful back home, doing other, less life threatening jobs. _“This isn’t a back ally, Steve, this is war.”_

So he had an affinity to be being up in back alleys. And some parking lots. And in a car garage, once. (He always had those guys on the ropes, no matter what Bucky said.) He’d rather be beaten up alongside other soldiers, trying to make a difference, and fighting for freedom and what he believed in than wasting away back in Brooklyn. So he turned to the next best thing: art. He could make a statement with art pieces. Political cartoons were just the tip of the ice burg; real pieces could _move_ people. Insight change. He wanted to paint the next _Gu_ _érnica._ Bucky always encouraged him on that front, at least. Figured paint fumes were better than gas fumes. Whenever Steve got discouraged, Bucky was right there pushing him to continue. It didn’t matter if they were ten, fifteen, twenty. Bucky was always there.

Until he wasn’t.

Sergeant James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes died on October 3rd, 2009 halfway across the world in Kamdesh, Afghanistan while Steve was stuck homebound. He remembered that day, mostly because of its normalcy. He went to work. He went home. He painted a little bit. All the while, Bucky was fighting and eventually lost his life in some random desert and Steve remembers being annoyed because the subway was late to take him home. Imagine that. While Bucky was being brutally killed, and Steve got a little mad because the train was five minutes late.

He didn’t find out until over a week later. They were the only ones either of them had, so Steve was the only one the army had to notify. Bucky had been awarded some medals for his bravery in battle. They said he pushed another soldier out of the way when a grenade hit, and it was because of Bucky’s sacrifice, the other soldier survived. They couldn’t do much in the situation, chaos reigned and nobody could go back in the bloodshed to see if there was anything they could do.

When the other soldiers finally pushed back the terrorists and recovered the base, the only thing they could find left of Sergeant Barnes was his left arm and his tags.

There was no body. How was Steve supposed to accept that? What kind of grenade completely disintegrates the body but leaves an arm and his dog tags? It didn’t add up. All it _did_ do was leave Steve with too many questions, no answers, and no closure. What he got instead was a left arm to bury, a folded flag to mourn, and some dog tags to keep him warm at night.

Steve still woke up in a cold sweat, Bucky’s name on his lips as he tried to warn him about the grenade. On the bad nights all he remembered was running around searching for Bucky, clutching his left arm the whole time. During the worse nights, the grenade was in his own hand and Bucky pushed him out of the way to protect him.

And on the worst nights, Bucky would turn to him and say, _“I’m with you ‘til the end of the line, pal,”_ before the grenade exploded.

It took Steve over three hours running around in the cold before he got home. Between all the coughing, he could barely wheeze in enough oxygen to keep himself conscious, let alone upright. It was all he could do to crawl his way up the stairs his asthma was so bad. He fumbled with numb fingers for his keys while leaning heavily against the door. His only stroke of luck that night was opening it on the first try, since on a good day it sometimes took Steve two or three tries when he had to twist the nob up and to the right while applying just the right amount of pressure to the bottom left corner or the door, it was so temperamental. Tonight he just did not have the fucking patience for that and had to throw all of his remaining strength into his door.

After locking the door (probably) he stumbled over to grab his inhaler (where he left it on his kitchen table) before barely making it to the bathroom to puke. He slumped against the toilet with his inhaler, trying not to pass out. At this point, he really should be calling an ambulance, but he just couldn’t risk it.

 _I just need a minute, I’ll be fine,_ he told himself instead. It was not the first time. _Just a minute to catch my breath._

Steve lived in a shitty, cramped studio apartment in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn because that was all he could afford. The door sticks, the kitchen sink can’t hold more than three dishes, the shower head leaks, the single window is drafty, and he had to get really creative to try to store all his paintings here. It wasn’t home, but it was somewhere to come back to.

One minute stretched to two, then five, then ten. If Bucky were here, he’d had never let Steve forget his inhaler, he thought bitterly. How many times had he run it up to Steve at work or school? Too fucking many, Bucky would complain, but he’d come every time.

Steve suddenly missed Bucky so fiercely he thought he might throw himself into another panic attack, which was the last thing he needed. _Calm down,_ he chided himself. He always missed Bucky — but right now he had an assassin on his tail, and he couldn’t let the rest of his neighbors get in any danger of being caught in the crossfire.

Steve pulled himself up and gripped the bathroom sink hard to wait out the black creeping into his vision. It was fine, he would be fine, even if he was still wheezing and it felt like he’d broken a couple ribs, he was going to be fine. He had to be.

So, he was officially on the run. He couldn’t count on having that much time to pack and get the hell out of dodge, so he had to be fast. He’d wasted too much time already.

He grabbed the duffle bag from his closet and shoved in just the bare minimum of clothes to get by. He packed in his laptop and charger but decided to leave his phone, since somebody could track it. Everything important (pictures, contacts) was already backed up onto his laptop anyway. Wallet, keys, and train card went back in his pocket while he stowed his toothbrush, copious amount of pills, and frankly extensive first aid kit into his bag. He didn’t have a lot of cash on him, and he should avoid using his debit card since that could be tracked too, so he was going to have to make a pit stop at the ATM.

The next question was where he was going to go. Take the ferry? No, that wouldn’t start up again until morning. He could try to catch a Megabus or Greyhound, but where would he go? He’d have to pay online for the Megabus anyway, and that could be tracked. If he wanted to get away with that he’d have to purchase multiple tickets to different locations and hope they didn’t go after the right one, but he also didn’t have the funds for that.

Well, wherever he went, the first thing he needed to do was to get the hell out of city, and then he could work on leaving the state.

Steve walked over to the skinny dresser he’d managed to cram in here. He had enough clothes, but what he had to bring with him was the memorial he had set up for Bucky and his Ma. It wasn’t much, not nearly enough of what they deserved, but it was something. He picked up the folded flag and set it in the bag. Then he took the framed photographs of Sergeant Barnes in his uniform and picture of Steve, Bucky, and his Ma when she was still healthy, which he carefully wrapped in Bucky’s old leather jacket so they wouldn’t break. Bucky’s medals and the small jewelry box that held his parents’ wedding rings got wrapped in her favorite scarf. He ducked under his bed and pulled out a small box that held the letters they sent back and forth and a small photo album that, for some odd reason, didn’t have any photos after 2009, even if it had a few blank pages left. Those and an older sketchbook got stowed away in the bag while Bucky’s dog tags got taken from their place on his nightstand and hung around Steve’s neck. It wasn’t much, but he wasn’t going to leave any of it behind.

The next thing he did was unplug everything and shove anything going to expire in the garbage, while the granola bars and a water bottle also went into his bag. He then pulled the garbage out to set it by the door, since who knew how long it was going to take people to notice he was missing. That only left the bathroom light on, which, in the half-light, made the small apartment seem even emptier. It felt lonely already, like he had already left. Somebody would at least notice he was gone by the time rent was due, at least, which was in another three weeks.

He looked at the few finished paintings in his apartment. Part of him wanted to preserve them somehow, since who knew what would happen to them after they discovered him missing or his body. He honestly didn’t have any close family — the people closest to him were probably his next-door neighbors, Jessie Henderson and her seven-year-old son, Damien, who he often babysat.

His heart clenched at the thought of leaving them. He had to, though, in order to keep them safe.

So he tore out a page of a notebook and scribbled what would probably end up being his will, as morbid as that sounded. He also wrote a brief description of the assassin, too. Everything left in this apartment was Jessie’s, with which she could do with as she saw fit, sell it, donate, whatever, if he hadn’t contacted anyone in a month. Steve lasting a month on his own would be a goddamn miracle — although he wasn’t quite sure if he believed in miracles anymore.

He’d taken too long already, but he couldn’t decide if he should leave it here or slip it under Jessie’s door. If he left it with her, it would put her under pressure and maybe attack, since she would then know details of what happened. But if he left it here, then he couldn’t be sure that the right guys would find it. He finally decided to stick in in the front cover of a sketchbook he was leaving behind — the bad guys wouldn’t be interested probably, since it wouldn’t tell them where he’d gone, but the good guys would be thorough in trying to find out what had happened.

He should have known that that would be pushing his luck. The hairs on the back of his neck raised a split second before the gun clicked and pressed against the back of his head.

“Try anything and you’re dead, and so is anyone who tries to help you.”

Steve swallowed and his stomach sank through the floor while the rest of his body broke out into a cold sweat, frozen in place. His brain, however, went into hyper-drive trying to think of a way out of this. It was definitely had to be the same man — who else would it be?

Steve couldn’t fight him, couldn’t outrun him, and probably couldn’t hide from him even if he did. The man had picked the lock on Steve’s door (he _had_ locked it, hadn’t he?) and snuck up on Steve all without him noticing until the gun was aimed at his head. How could he go against that? He didn’t have any weapons or any way to contact anyone for help even if he wasn’t afraid for their lives.

The only thing Steve could do was to try to outsmart him, either into getting him to leave him alone or trying to get the gun away. Did Steve have the guts to kill this man, if it came down to it? There had to be another way. He didn’t want to kill anybody, even if this man was going to kill him.

This, well. This was going to be interesting.

“Turn around.”

Steve wasn’t sure what exactly the man’s play was. Did he like to look in his victims eyes as the light faded from them? Of course he would get the sick fucks. Steve did as he was told anyway, though, since it wasn’t like he had a choice and he _hated_ that. Following what the man said for now might be his best plan for survival.

Steve turned and faced the man, the gun unwavering a few inches from his forehead, clutched in a shiny metal hand. He ignored it as best he could and stared him down.

“Well?” Steve asked. “Are you going to kill me or not?”

Bucky would be having a conniption right now if he saw Steve daring this _trained assassin_ to kill him. But Bucky wasn’t here and no one was coming to save him. Contrary to popular belief, however, he didn’t _actually_ have a death wish. He just also didn’t want to drag innocent people into his problems. If him dying right now prevented those around him from dying, then so be it. His life certainly wasn’t worth the risk of losing anyone else.

What he didn’t understand, however, was how and why he was still standing. Obviously he could have been dead any time along his way back home, so why wait? Why let him keep breathing? What, did he want to see what Steve knew, or what he told? Maybe that was the angle that Steve had to work for — act like he told the authorities what he saw.

Which hadn’t he told himself he’d call the police or someone when he got home? _Shit._ Did that count as a stupid mistake or did he unintentionally save lives? Did this man even care about killing the authorities? Probably not.

The man didn’t answer at first, glaring down at Steve. It looked like he’d changed his jacket, since this one covered his metal arm, only leaving the hand for view. He still had the half mask on, though. There were smudges of blue paint near the nose.

“You…” he started. “You were in the alley.”

His voice was weirdly flat and raspy, like he was trying to speak without a recognizable accent, but also like he hadn’t spoken for a long time in general. There was something else, too. There was no way Steve could have heard it before, but it reminded him of someone, like some half forgotten song on the tip of his tongue.

“Yes,” Steve said, taken aback. That was not the question he expected at all. Why the man needed that confirmation, Steve had no idea, but maybe he just didn’t want to kill the wrong person? Steve didn’t have time to ponder that sort of strange moral code. “I was in the alley.”

The metal fingers flexed their grip on the gun and he looked away. Logic told Steve that he should have a bullet in his head right now, but the man’s body language read like he was internally struggling with something. What the fuck could he be thinking?

The gun drew away from his head slowly and he glanced back at Steve.

“You were in the alley.”

Steve’s eyebrows furrowed. He couldn’t figure out what was going through this man’s head. “…yes. I was in the alley.”

The assassin’s head tilted a little to the right, then he looked down at his right hand. The blue paint was still there, along with—

 _Oh god there’s blood on his hand,_ Steve thought. His stomach convulsed like it wanted to puke again, because that could only mean one thing — the woman and her child— they— he—

The assassin — the _murderer_ — abruptly turned right past Steve to listen at the door. Steve should be doing something, anything. He was so outmatched in so many ways but he had to do _something._

“Did you do it? Did you kill them?” he asked furiously, his fists clenched and shaking at his sides.

The man ignored him, stalking over to peek behind the curtains of the window and Steve couldn’t help but notice the way he could barely hear him move. If he hadn’t been looking at him, he wouldn’t have believed they were in the same room. That was some kind of terrifying that Steve didn’t want to think about.

“Did you hunt them down and murder them after you shot at me?”

He paused and looked back at Steve with his eyebrows furrowed like _he_ was confused — how could he be confused of all things? How could he kill in cold blood like that? — before he walked over and… slid down the wall to sit down opposite the door to the bathroom…? Strategically it was probably the best spot, since he could still see every part of the room, though it being a small studio that wasn’t hard, but it was also out of the way of the front door and the window.

The only thing running through Steve’s mind at this point was, _what the fuck?_ No, seriously, what the fuck was he even doing?! Steve glanced around his apartment like some answer for his behavior was going to come miraculously from his surroundings. This — this was _weird_ , right? It didn’t seem like he had any wish to kill or interrogate Steve, which just _didn’t make any sense._ And was also really frustrating. Either kill him or leave already, goddammit. Assassins didn’t live in this limbo of chilling in their target’s apartment like they were old pals.

The man kept rubbing his human fingers around in the blue paint on his hand, some of which started to mix with the blood.

“Tell me right now. Did you kill the woman and her child?” Steve ordered.

“Mission incomplete. Targets’ location is unknown. Estimated time for completion is unknown,” the man answered disinterestedly, his words slightly muffled by the mask. He didn’t even look at Steve.

Regardless, Steve felt a rush of relief sweep through him. If the man was telling the truth, then _they were still alive!_

Except… that was _if_ he was telling the truth. And _if_ he actually didn’t kill them, then whose blood was that on his hand? Steve hesitantly stepped closer, not wanting to accidentally startle the man into shooting him.

“Whose blood is that?”

He didn’t answer, staring off somewhere to his left.

“Hey,” Steve said, more sharply and pointed to the blood. “Whose blood is that on your hand?”

This time he looked at Steve with his brow furrowed, then looked down at his hand like he was surprised to find blood on it. Steve wasn’t sure if he was going to answer this time either, but tried to wait patiently.

“I… I need maintenance,” the man said softly.

‘Maintenance’? It took Steve a moment to figure out what exactly he meant. “You’re hurt?” he asked and took another step closer. “Can I see—”

The man jerked the gun back at Steve and stared him down.

“Okay! Okay,” Steve said with his hands up. Best not to startle potentially trigger-happy assassins. “I just want to see. You’re hurt? I can help.”

No answer.

Steve stood a moment, and tried to imagine why this man was bleeding. Maybe someone else stopped the assassination, and when they fought, he got hurt? Maybe the woman he’d been trying to kill was some kind of covert agent? How the hell had the _assassin_ end up hurt and not his targets? It was too improbable; Steve needed solid proof that it was actually the assassin’s blood and not hers.

“In my duffle here,” Steve said and pointed. “I have a first aid kit. If you’re bleeding, I can help you.”

He didn’t blink. Steve wasn’t even sure he was even breathing with how unnervingly still he was. He tried his luck anyway with slowly crouching down to grab the kit out of his bag, making sure this hands stayed visible at all possible times. The gun stayed trained on him, but nothing happened.

“See?” he said. “A first aid kit.” He took a step closer. “I can help you,” he repeated. “Let me help you.”

He kneeled down to make himself less threatening as if he was approaching a wild animal. It kind of felt like he was.

“Don’t,” the man gritted out. Steve stopped where he was, just far enough that he couldn’t reach him.

“You’re bleeding,” Steve said softly and gestured back down to the man’s hand then looked him straight in the eye. “I won’t hurt you,” he promised.

His eyes darted all around but Steve kept his gaze steady and focused on breathing. He had a feeling, with the way he was acting, that it really _was_ the assassin’s blood, and wondered if he actually wanted to help this man. Well, it didn’t really matter if he wanted to or not — it wasn’t Steve’s place to judge if he should let him bleed out on the floor or not. Everyone deserved a fair trial, even him.

Their eyes met again.

“You… you were in the alley.”

 _Lost_ , Steve decided. _He just looks lost_.

“Yes,” Steve answered again. “I was in the alley.”

The gun lowered a little, and Steve took that as an invitation to continue over to him. He hesitated next to his right side, though. He didn’t know how the man would react to being touched.

“Where are you hurt?” he asked and opened the medical kit. He reached over slowly. “Your arm…?”

The man flinched away and the gun was pointed right back at Steve’s forehead again. Steve raised his hands up in a placating gesture and swallowed down his own fear. He didn’t know why he was so sure, but this man wasn’t going to kill him. Sure, he had a gun to his head, but he wasn’t going to shoot. If he were, he’d have done so already. Steve’s gut was rarely wrong.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said again. “I want to help you. Where are you hurt?”

He breathed out harshly and flexed his metal fingers against the gun in response.

“You’re going to be okay,” Steve murmured. From this distance, he could see that the man’s eyes were light blue, like Bucky’s.

But this wasn’t about Bucky. Steve currently had a gun next to his head held by a trained assassin that for some reason he was sure _wasn’t_ going to kill him. He had other problems to concentrate on.

“Two GSWs,” he said like he was describing the weather. The gun went back down to rest at his side. “Through and through in upper right arm, the bullet still in the lower right abdomen.”

“You were running around with two bullet wounds?!” Steve asked. The man stared blankly at the wall across.

 _Super people,_ Steve thought incredulously. Most people would have been dead from blood loss or shock already.

“Alright. Can I take off your jacket?”

No answer.

“Hey,” he said, trying to catch the man’s eye. “Can I take off your jacket?”

The man turned his blank stare on Steve, and man, it even crept Steve out. He tilted his head a little. Steve wished he could see the rest of his face to get a better read on him, but he guessed it was probably just as blank as the rest of him.

“…Your jacket? I need to take it off to see to your wounds. Can I take it off?”

He shrugged slightly. His gaze slid back away.

That was as good of a yes as Steve was going to get. He unzipped the jacket, pinched as little as he could with his fingers, and tried as gently as possible to peel the right side of it away from his body. Close up and from the light of the bathroom, Steve could now see how wet with blood it was. Underneath, he was only wearing a tactical vest and a gray camouflage shirt. He must have been shot after the alley and that was why he’d put on his jacket, since there were no bullet holes in it.

Steve shrugged off his own jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and opened the kit. Super person or not, he had to act quickly. Was he in shock? Is that why he was acting so strangely? He pulled on a pair of latex gloves and tried to assess the damage. The bullet wound to his gut was probably more dangerous and should be treated first, but there was the danger of the one in his arm having damaged the major vein and artery. Although he hadn’t bled out yet, so that was unlikely. He carefully unbuckled his vest and grabbed a pair of scissors to carefully cut the shirt around where the pools of blood were darkest.

And well, he hadn’t been lying. That was definitely a bullet wound.

Which also begged the question of who exactly shot him in the first place, since there was no way he’d be easy to take down.

He took some gauze and some plastic and pressed firmly against his abdomen with his right hand. With his left, he nudged the man forward a little so he could run his hand lightly along his back to check for any exit wounds. The man had said the bullet was still in his body, but he had to make sure. He didn’t feel anything, but since bullets rarely take a direct route through the body, he would have to check again once his other wounds are taken care of.

“Hey, are you okay? Talk to me. Are you cold? Hey, look at me,” Steve said, and raised one hand to turn the man’s face towards him. “Are you cold?” he asked again, along with checking his pulse.

“…No,” he said, but he sounded unsure. Steve counted his pulse against his watch, but fortunately it seemed steady and only a little slow. Probably not a lot of internal bleeding, which was a blessing. The tactical vest must have prevented the bullet from going very far into his abdomen, and was probably the only reason he was still alive. Compared against Steve’s skin he was a little warmer, but seeing that Steve was consistently colder than pretty much everyone, he might still be cold.

“Alright, give me your hand.” He motioned for the metal one. “Put the gun down and put pressure on this.”

He stared at Steve, who raised his eyebrows.

“Look, if you want to die from blood loss, fine. If not, put the gun down and put pressure on this so I can start treating your arm.”

He got a petulant look in his eye and Steve got ready to argue more, but the man did what he was told and replaced Steve’s hand with his metal one. Steve tried not to be thrown off by how much that look reminded him of Bucky, especially with eyes so alike in color. This was so not the time.

The wound in his upper right arm was a little more difficult to get to, since Steve had to somehow convince the man to shrug the sleeve of his jacket away while trying not to move the arm or touch him too much. Steve ended up just cutting the sleeve of his shirt off so he could get more gauze and press firmly on both sides of his arm at the same time. This wound, fortunately, seemed to pass right through with probably only minimal damage to the musculature and bone. If the man could still move his fingers, the likelihood of a bad break was very low.

“We’ll be lucky if the bullet in your gut didn’t hit anything important. We’ll be even luckier if you don’t die from shock before we find someone more qualified to treat you — I can only do so much with gauze. Who shot you?”

The man shook his head once. Figured that wouldn’t get an answer from him. He had to make sure he stayed responsive though, and he should also get him a blanket.

“Okay, fine. How’s the pain? Does anywhere else hurt?”

“Pain is negligible,” he answered eventually. “Everything else is functioning properly.”

Steve’s eyebrows rose even higher. “Sure, you were only shot twice and are suffering from major blood loss and trauma, but the pain is ‘negligible.’ Look, if it hurts you don’t have to lie to me.”

The man looked at him strangely. Steve sighed and rehashed his grip on the man’s arm with more gauze. The bleeding was already slowing, though. Sure, Steve had never treated a gun shot wound before, but he expected that they would bleed more, or for longer, especially if the man had been running around for who knows how long before getting some sort of treatment. Maybe he had some sort of quick healing ability. That would explain how he wasn’t dead yet.

“How about we start again? My name is Steve Rogers.” No point in hiding his identity at this point, he figured. “What’s yours?”

Nothing. His blue eyed chilled something in Steve. It went beyond just being ‘blank’ it was… he wasn’t sure there was anything behind them at all. Sometimes he seemed lost, and others, like right now, it was like there was nothing there to be found in the first place.

“Really? You’re not even going to tell me your code name or something? It’s okay. You can trust me.”

Nothing.

“It doesn’t even have to be your real code name. Just, you know, anything. What do you like being called?”

“I’m a weapon,” he said, vaguely confused, like he couldn’t figure out why Steve was asking.

All sorts of red flags were being raised at that. A _weapon_? What did that even mean?

“You’re not a weapon,” Steve said slowly, looking him right in those frozen eyes. “You’re a person.”

He blinked, before shaking his head once and turning back to the wall. “A weapon,” he muttered.

This was a weird situation from the beginning, and Steve had only ever heard rumors of cases of this happening, but what if… what if this man had been brainwashed? Or this was mind control of some kind? That would explain the erratic and illogical behavior and seeming lack of self-preservation. _“I’m a weapon.”_ Jesus Christ. It didn’t explain why he came to _Steve_ of all people, but he was probably an unimportant factor in this. Did this man coming here mean that he was breaking out of the brainwashing? Was that even possible? And even if it wasn’t direct mind control, who knew how much psychological trauma it took to convince a person he wasn’t a person, but a weapon for someone else’s use.

 _Oh god,_ Steve realized with sudden horror. _Maybe the pain of two gun shot wounds is negligible because he was used to so much **worse**._

He didn’t have any concrete evidence to support this. He _could_ be way off the mark and jumping to conclusions. For all he knew, this man just could just have high pain tolerance due to other factors. Maybe he _was_ in shock, or hit his head somewhere along the way. Maybe this was all a ruse to gain Steve’s trust.

Maybe. Or maybe this man was just as much of a victim as that mother and child were going to be.

Steve’s gut was never wrong.

“So,” Steve started again. He cleared away the lump in his throat. “You didn’t complete your mission.”

“Mission incomplete. Targets’ location is unknown. Estimated time for completion is unknown,” he repeated, staring at the wall.

“…Okay,” Steve said, trying to ignore how much the blank gaze and monotone voice unsettled him. He pinched around the man’s bicep hard as he reached for more gauze to wrap around it. He knew he should be calling an ambulance, like, ten minutes ago, but who knew how the man would react to that. He’d probably run, or worse, actually follow through on his threat of killing people. Sure, Steve didn’t believe he _personally_ was in any danger (from the man, anyway), but he honestly had no idea how the man would react to other people. Mind control, if that was what he was dealing with here, was a totally different ball game than anything Steve was even remotely prepared for.

He needed to switch places with the metal arm, so while making sure his movements were slow and obvious, he gently pulled the metal arm away from the abdomen. As soon as he touched it, the man eyed him, startled despite Steve’s caution, but just opted to watch what Steve was doing. The way he gazed at Steve now… it wasn’t angry, or blank, like before. It was soft and openly curious. He obediently gripped his own arm when Steve prompted him to and made him raise his human arm so it rested up along his neckline.

He then began wrapping even more gauze around the man’s waist. He had to practically hug the man to do it and even though he couldn’t quite look the man in the face, the man and no problems in watching Steve and this whole thing felt way too intimate for Steve’s liking. He shouldn’t be acting so familiar with his this man, this _assassin_. He taped off the last part of the gauze. Hopefully that would hold.

“Who gave you the mission? Do you know them?” he asked to get his bearings back. _This is an assassin,_ he reminded himself again. He wasn’t sure if it was working.

To Steve’s surprise, he said something in German.

“What?”

He turned to face Steve fully and stared at him hard. He repeated whatever he said in German. From how he said it, it sounded important, like he was trying to impress on Steve the meaning of his words.

It struck him just then about what the mask reminded him of: a muzzle. “I don’t speak German,” he replied impatiently. _A muzzle,_ he thought, _who puts a muzzle on a man?_ “What did you just say in English?”

No answer. Steve dismissed it for now as a lost cause. “Why haven’t you killed me yet?” he asked instead.

He flinched when the metal arm moved suddenly to his face, but stayed where he was as the fingers held his jaw. _They’re cold_ , he thought lamely. _And wet._ They’re so close like this. When he swallowed again, the ache in his throat reminded him exactly what that arm was capable of, and he had to lock down his body’s instinct to fight back. It was hard to stay calm with his heart pounding and the man’s blue so-like-Bucky’s-but-weren’t eyes roving over his face, like he was trying to memorize it. He was definitely looking for something as they stared each other down.

Steve’s not sure of what he found when the man murmured again, “You were in the alley.”

“Yes. I was,” he breathed. Outside, there was the muffled rush of traffic and the occasional siren. It felt miles away from the oppressive silence of the apartment.

The man abruptly dropped his arm and turned back away from Steve, his metal fingers clenched tightly in a fist. Steve wondered vaguely how hard it would be for this man to crush his jaw in that hand.

“From what I can tell,” Steve started after a moment, still sounding slightly winded. He cleared his throat. “The bleeding has mostly stopped. We should—” he casted around for his belongings. He had to get rid of his bloody gloves. “We should… well, _you_ shouldn’t be moving, but—”

His lungs weren’t working properly at the moment; maybe he was going to die by asphyxiation tonight no matter what happened because of his damned, failing body. He stood up shakily and backed away from the man into bathroom. Getting these gloves off would be so much easier if he could get his goddamn hands to stop shaking, everything was going to be _fine_ but he couldn’t get his fucking hands to stop _shaking_ —

He flinched as his hands hit the cold water, but it was okay, he’d been through worse, he was going to be fine. The blood swirled down the drain and he had seen that way to often to be bothered by it anymore, so why was he panicking? Was this some leftover from his adrenaline rush?

“You were in the alley,” the man said behind him.

“Yes, yes,” he said distractedly, glancing up at the man in the mirror. Couldn’t he let that go? “I was in the alley.”

He gripped the edges of the sink hard and tried to concentrate on his breathing. _Breath in for four, hold for four, let out in four. Breath in for four, hold for four, let out in four. Breathe in for four, hold for four…_

His pale face was flushed; he was too warm in here. The man had left bloody smudges on his jaw from where he held it, which he frantically splashed with water to wash it away. _Calm **down,**_ he scolded himself. He yanked the collar away from his neck and stared at the bruises there: deep blues and purples in the shape of a hand that wrapped around his throat. He should be icing that, but it wasn’t life threatening like two gunshot wounds were. Probably. Of his extensive list of ailments and injuries, he’d never been strangled before, but bruises this deep could be dangerous. He just didn’t know how dangerous when it came to the neck.

“You were in the alley…” the man muttered, his voice dazed. “You had him on the ropes.”

Steve’s blood turned to ice.

Because, what. _What._

He whipped around. “What?” he said lowly. “ _What_ did you just say?”

He blinked and looked blankly up at Steve. “You were in the alley. You… had him on the ropes.” His gaze drifted to the side and he seemed vaguely troubled.

Absurdly, Steve thought of one time that he and Bucky were in one of the numerous local parks back in their old neighborhood. To be honest, he didn’t remember much of that day; Bucky and him went to the park a lot, and they must have only been around eleven at the time.

He did remember goading Bucky into climbing the trees around the park. He had started climbing one of the bigger trees, because he was eleven and angry and finally not sick for once. Bucky had said to him, _“If you fall, your Ma is gonna kill you,”_ but had given him a leg up anyway. Once he was sitting on a sturdy branch, he offered his hand to Bucky, who sighed, but took it anyway. They climbed higher, Bucky shutting up about his reservations about the whole thing after Steve called him a huge fraidy-cat. No Brooklyn boy like Bucky would ever sit back and let himself be called a fraidy-cat. Didn’t you know? He was gonna be in the army. He couldn’t be a fraidy-cat if he and Steve were gonna go be in the army together.

He didn’t know how far up they actually climbed, but he remembered looking down and getting lightheaded. They were probably only about eight or ten feet off the ground, but it was definitely high enough for two eleven year olds who were less than half that height. They sat next to each other gazed down. _“Don’t worry,”_ Bucky had said, _“your feet are closer to the ground than your head is.”_ Steve had told him he wasn’t afraid, but that was only about half true. He sure wasn’t gripping the branch like he wasn’t, but then again neither was Bucky, and they both knew that.

Bucky had started to suggest they get down, since they both had their fill, and it wasn’t because either of them were scared or nothing, when they heard a big, bone deep **_crack_ ** and both of them dropped a couple of inches, scrambling for purchase in the bark of the tree.

That was the moment that Steve remembered like it was yesterday: he wide-eyed look of horror on Bucky’s pale face as they stared at each other, the same look that Steve mirrored, the _swoop_ of his stomach like it fell to the ground before he did, the sudden rush of adrenaline as the terror of realization hit them. They barely had time enough to take a breath before there was an even bigger, heart stopping **_CRACK_** and both of them went falling down… down…

 _“You had him on the ropes.”_ That was the first **_crack_**. Steve scrambled for purchase on the sink behind him as knees threatened to give out on him. There was— this couldn’t— but it wasn’t—

 _He doesn’t have a left arm,_ some distant voice in Steve’s head helpfully provided. _Shut up_ , Steve thought back.

The man, because he couldn’t — he _couldn’t_ — seemed frankly disinterested in whatever crisis Steve was having. That frozen, empty look had returned.

 _That_ was why. That was why he couldn’t… He didn’t recognize Steve. Surely if Bucky were around Steve, especially for this long, he would know. God, they had _lived_ together for a good four years! You get to know somebody real well after that. Plus, _plus_! Bucky would never, _ever_ hurt somebody like this man was going to kill that woman and her child. And who would have given him an arm like that? No matter how much Bucky liked science fiction, he didn’t actually want to be _in_ one.

 _Brainwashing,_ the voice whispered, leading his mind in circles. He didn’t have a left arm. Five years. His eyes. Same color hair, if it was longer. He had him on the ropes. A muzzle. How else could Steve be so sure this assassin wasn’t going to kill him if it wasn’t? Pain is negligible. Five years. He’s a weapon. Brainwashing. Five years and a month. Jesus Christ. No left arm. He was in the alley. He had him on the ropes.

Coming to Steve’s place wasn’t a coincidence.

 _Stop,_ Steve thought desperately. _It can’t be. It **can’t** be._

“Why were going to hurt them?” he blurted out. “The mother and child. Why were you going to hurt them?”

“They were my mission,” the man grit out. The metal fingers glinted as he flexed them.

“Why? Why were you going to kill them?”

“They were my _mission_ ,” he snapped, glaring at Steve, who fell to his knees and crept closer to him.

“Why?” he asked again. “Why were they your mission?”

_I need to get the mask off. I need to see._

“I… they were my _mission_ ,” he repeated, putting his right hand to his head and squinting.

“I know they were your mission! _Why_ were they your mission? _Why_ did you have to kill them?" 

“Shut _up_!” the man yelled, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead hard and raised the gun at Steve again. “ _Shut up!_ ”

“Okay,” he said, breathing hard, because wasn’t that his answer? The man _couldn’t_ answer. He probably had no idea why they were his mission, just that they were. “Okay.”

The man glared at him and for the first time since he’d entered the apartment, there was distrust there.

“So, okay. You didn’t hurt the mother and child. Why?”

No answer.

“Why didn’t you hurt them?” he prompted again. “You failed your mission—”

The gun clunked to the floor and his eyes glazed over. “Mission incomplete. Targets’ location is unknown. Estimated time for completion is unknown.”

Steve might be no psychologist, but even he knew that that was not a good sign. “Hey,” he choked out. “Hey, are you with me?” he tried again.

The lack of response worried Steve greatly; this is probably some form of disassociation. He crawled forward and hovered near — near the man, because he wasn’t responding to what Steve as saying and the last thing he wanted to do was touch him, in case that triggered some sort of violent reaction. But not touching him felt like not doing anything because _he needed to know._ He kept speaking to him, getting drastically more desperate but pointedly trying to keep the sharp edge out of his voice.

After about the longest ten minutes of Steve’s life, his attempt to calmly bring back the man from wherever he had gone worked (sort of) and he finally responded.

“The man in the alley… who was he?” he asked, focusing on something to his left and squinting a little.

“I was,” Steve answered. He hadn’t been talking to Steve, but he was _talking._ “Steve Rogers. I was the man in the alley.”

The man turned his gaze back to Steve like he had forgotten he was there. Steve fisted the fabric of his jeans to prevent him from just ripping the mask off right then. As much as Steve wanted, _needed_ , to know, this wasn’t about him, not really. Sudden movements had already proven to be a bad idea anyway.

“You had him on the ropes,” he murmured.

“ _Yes,_ ” Steve replied emphatically. “I was in the alley. I had him on the ropes.”

He seemed lost again, and Steve preferred that over him seeming empty and clung to it. He had a hunch he needed to prove.

“What will they do to you if you go back?” he asked.

The reaction wasn’t immediate. In fact, it didn’t seem to faze him at all, and to be honest, Steve didn’t think he was going to get an answer. At first. The man’s eyes narrowed, then, like maybe he had a headache, but smoothed out again after a moment. Steve watched, tense, as his blue eyes then flitted around the room, not focusing on anything. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. His fingers, metal and human, clenched and unclenched tightly. His breathing picked up slightly, and that was the only warning Steve got before the man grabbed the gun and pointed it at the bottom of his own skull.

“ _No_!” Steve yelled as he clamped his own hands around the cold metal of the man’s hand.

Physically, Steve did not have the power to keep the man from shooting a bullet into his head. He couldn’t wrestle the gun away, or even pull it back the slightest bit. Even so, the man listened to him, at least for the moment. The gun stayed where it was beneath his jaw and he glared hatefully at Steve, but he didn’t end his life. That was the only thing Steve could hold on to. He hadn’t shot himself. Yet.

“They hurt you,” he said. He had no idea how to convince the man — Bucky? Could… could it really be him? — to keep on living, but he had to do it somehow. “They hurt you so bad, did terrible, unspeakable things to you. I can’t take back what they did to you, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I wish I could, I really do. But that doesn’t mean you should give up. _Please_.

“You don’t have to go back! Don’t let them take you back. I’ll help you. I’ll stay with you. You want them to go suffer for what they did to you, right? You want them to get the justice they deserve, right? Fuck them. Fuck them for whatever possessed them to make you think you’re nothing more than a weapon. You’re human and you deserve better and those fuckers deserve to get the very worst the law can bring down on them and then some for what they did to you.”

Nothing Steve said seemed to get through. The gun stayed where it was and his eyes stayed impassive, unreachable behind miles of ice. Steve was losing him, but he couldn’t, not now. He adjusted his white knuckled grip on the metal hand and took a leap of faith.

“I’ll come with you. We can leave right now. We’ll get help. I promise, they will never lay another hand on you again. We’ll get through this — together. This doesn’t have to be the end, instead, let’s make it a new beginning. I’m willing to fight for it. Are you? I’ll stand with you no matter what. You are my friend and… and…”

_Because if this is Bucky, if this is really Bucky…_

“…and I’m with you, ‘til the end of the line.”

Steve watched as he blinked once, twice, three times, the ice starting to melt to reveal the wild, panicked confusion underneath. His breathing picked up again, but the gun started to lower, and while Steve didn’t think the metal could actually _relax_ , at least it wasn’t pointed at his head anymore. Gently, Steve eased the gun out of his hand. Being so close he could feel the human parts of his body trembling, and although the metal arm stayed eerily still, his hand was starting to warm a little where Steve held it.

“It’s okay,” Steve said, reaching up to his mask. Oh, he was shaking too, it seemed. The smudges of blue paint glinted in the light. “It’s gonna be okay.”

And there, the second **_CRACK_** rang through to Steve’s very core because that was on Bucky’s face, the pale wide-eyed look of horror that was beneath the mask and he didn’t have a left arm and five years and a month and he had him on the ropes and Steve was falling, down… down…

“Bucky,” he said, the word slipping off his lips like a prayer.

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm agentrainycarter on tumblr!


	2. Peripeteia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The second part of the first part! Hopefully. Maybe. I've already got some stuff written to continue this, so we'll see.
> 
> Steve's interesting to write, but I'll probably switch POV's just to keep things interesting.
> 
> And unbeta'd, so any glaring mistakes please tell me!

The door burst open and slammed against the wall. Both Bucky and Steve’s heads whipped around as four men clad in black battle gear and guns crowded inside. 

“Winter Soldier!” one of them shouted in a German accent. “Stand down and come with us!”

“No he won’t!” Steve yelled and didn’t even think before he stood up in front of Bucky, pointing the gun at the four men. “He’ll never go with you again!”

Steve, who had never actually held a gun in his life let alone be prepared to shoot one, was slower on the draw than the trained men in front of him. One of the four shot at Steve, which would have landed between his eyes if Bucky’s metal arm hadn’t appeared in front of his face to deflect it.

“Winter Soldier! Stand down!” the one who shot at Steve yelled. He had a New York accent. “You are to come with us and complete your mission. Kill that man, or we will.”

The metal arm was still in curled protectively in front of Steve, but he could see Bucky in his peripheral vision; the frozen, dead look had returned. Steve had never in his life felt so much pure, blinding rage so quickly and so suddenly before.

“He is _not your weapon_ ,” he spat and ducked under the arm and stepped forward, his head high. “And you are never going to hurt him again! And I swear to God you’ll pay with that ya hear me?!”

The man actually rolled his eyes. “Kill him, then deal with the asset.”

This time Steve was yanked backwards by his collar and thrown bodily onto the floor behind Bucky, Bucky who was human and good and hurt and _not dead_. Gun shots rang out, and Steve worried for approximately half a second since he still had Bucky’s gun before he watched him dodge and block the bullets well enough without one.

Bucky twisted the American’s arm with his right arm, breaking it, before snapping down his left hand into his chest so hard he propelled him across the room and dented the wall. He collapsed and nearly landed on Steve who quickly rolled out of the way and grabbed Bucky’s mask and his jacket.

Bucky was fast, too fast for the other three men to keep up with. Steve stayed crouched down to the floor to hide from errant bullets. God, he hoped none of them went through the walls and accidently hurt his neighbors. Steve took his chance in the chaos and shrugged on his jacket while Bucky disarmed the men; punching one so hard in the face with his left hand he catapulted his body through the window, letting in a blast cold of air. The third he kicked so hard his head crashed through Steve’s dresser. Steve wrapped a scarf around his neck and watched as the last man, the German who had spoken earlier, barely got a punch in before Bucky had him in a headlock.

“Hail Hydr—” the man said before Bucky snapped his neck and let his body drop to the floor.

Steve froze from his spot on the floor where he had been reaching for two ball caps, Bucky’s mask shoved in the duffle already. “ _Hydra_?!”Steve exclaimed in disbelief. Bucky turned to look at him, face unreadable.

Four Hydra agents in his apartment. The whole fight probably lasted thirty seconds. Four now dead Hydra agents in his apartment, who had been looking for Bucky.

“We need to leave,” Steve said dazedly, staring at the bodies. There would be more to come, he knew. He stood up and black dots popped in front of his eyes. He pulled on one of the ball caps and offered the extra one to Bucky, who took it without question. He reached for his duffle.

Bucky snatched the duffle bag out of Steve’s hands to carry, then grabbed Steve and threw him unceremoniously over his shoulder as well. Steve barely got a word of protest before Bucky strode to the window and jumped out. Third story or not, he landed light on his feet and used his momentum to sprint away.

And damn, he was _fast_. Much faster than he had been before he went to war. Inhumanely fast.

It was all Steve could do to hang on as they tore through Brooklyn streets and he hated feeling so weak as to have to rely on Bucky literally carrying him away, regardless of whether he could have kept up physically or not. They ducked down dark alleys, keeping to the shadows and away from anyone brave enough to be out this late.

Eventually Bucky did stop and put Steve down, giving Steve a moment to get his bearings. It was bitterly cold out, and cuddling up with Bucky’s metal arm didn’t do him any favors. He shoved the ball cap down farther on his head against the chill breathed warm air on his hands.

They were out behind some apartments, which he recognized. Jesus, they were all the way out by Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. It was over a three-mile walk from Steve’s apartment and that was if you walked directly to it, which they hadn’t. Bucky had taken numerous detours and random turns, and yet they had made it here in less than twenty minutes and Bucky was barely out of breath. That was… Steve looked at Bucky in a new light, trying to gage just how much he had changed — or, rather, how Hydra had changed _him_ — while he stared back impassively.

 _“Who the hell is Bucky?”_ he’d said. Jesus fucking Christ. He probably wasn’t aware he’d changed at all, because he didn’t know how he was before Hydra had taken him.

“We’d better keep moving,” Steve said, because Steve didn’t want to think about what they did to him, and because even no matter how much he changed, he was still Bucky. He might not remember that now and he might not even remember Steve, but he will. Steve was going to make sure of that.

Bucky gave one curt nod and they turned and walked in what was probably a random direction. Steve shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to follow Bucky as best he could, who moved silently beside him. And Steve meant that literally, he couldn’t hear his footsteps along the pavement or even the barest whisper of clothes. Steve sounded like a herd of elephants next to him and tried his best to mimic the silence, because the last thing he wanted to be was a burden. It’d already been humiliating enough for Bucky to have to have carried him thus far anyway. He tried to think of escape plans instead, which hell, he’d live as hobos and flee the country for the rest of his life with Bucky if he had to. It was a small price to pay, in the end.

As much as he hated to admit it, though, his body had been put through a lot of stress tonight. (Had it really only been a couple of hours since the alley?) It didn’t take long before he was struggling to keep up with Bucky’s long stride, who seemed entirely unaffected by the cold, the miles he sprinted, or the two gun shot wounds he had. They were on the run; they couldn’t stop or slow down for Steve’s asthma. He pushed through, breathing through his scarf so he didn’t have to take in the frozen winter air directly.

It didn’t take long for him to start wheezing, staggering a little behind Bucky, no matter how much he tried to suppress his own weakness. The attack from earlier led him to have another more quickly, since he hadn’t yet fully recovered. That couldn’t stop him, though. He had to keep up with Bucky. They had to get far, far away from here, and that wouldn’t happen if Steve couldn’t keep his fucking asthma under control.

His wheezing did get worse, of course it did, because that was just Steve’s fucking luck. Bucky changed their direction and nudged them down a narrow side street, farther into the shadows, and stopped to wait for Steve.

“I’m fine,” Steve gasped. “We need to — keep moving.”

Bucky didn’t keep moving, though.

Rolling his eyes, Steve conceded that, okay, maybe he should take his inhaler. He patted down his coat for his pockets and oh. Oh shit.

“ _Dammit_ ,” he swore because he left the stupid thing back in his apartment, which now had the dead bodies of four Hydra agents in it. He did fortunately keep an extra in the first aid kit which — of _course_ , he hadn’t repacked after helping Bucky, so it was just as useless. “Fucking _goddammit_.” He had never hated his body so much until now; this was _important_ and he couldn’t just let Bucky down like this, not again, not when he had already failed him so thoroughly—

Bucky held out his metal hand, where Steve’s inhaler rested in his palm.

“You… grabbed my inhaler?” he wheezed and that hurt, oh that hurt more than his own ribs squeezing his lungs, his own throat closing off the desperately needed oxygen, his body burning from the inside out. Steve would probably let out a sob if he could take a breath.

When he didn’t take the inhaler fast enough, Bucky grabbed his hand to make him take it anyway. As Steve inhaled and held in the medicine, he focused on holding in his emotions as well. There would be time to deal with them later.

“We’ll take a car,” Bucky said. It was the first time he’d spoken since the apartment.

“Take a car? Bucky, we can’t do that, it’s illegal!”

Whatever Bucky might have replied got cut off as he turned and caught an arrow that was aimed straight at his head.

“Tick tick boom,” a white man dressed in purple said as he jumped down from a nearby building, bow in hand.

 _That’s Hawkeye!_ was the only thing Steve could think before the arrow exploded in Bucky’s hand. Steve turned away from the blast that knocked him on the ground, ears ringing. When he looked back up, a redheaded white woman dressed in a tight black suit jumped out of nowhere onto Bucky, who threw her off. She flipped in the air and pushed off a car and reengaged with Bucky, their fists and feet flying faster than Steve could keep up.

“You know, you should listen to that guy over there. Stealing cars are illegal, you really wouldn’t want that on your record,” Hawkeye said, firing more arrows at Bucky, while dodging the bullets Bucky shot back. “It would really look bad next to the general murder and mayhem you’ve committed.”

“Wait!” Steve yelled, scrambling to get up. “Stop fighting!”

Hawkeye was an Avenger, SHIELD agent, and an amazing marksman, Steve knew. He didn’t know who the redheaded woman was, but if she was working with Hawkeye, she must be some kind of hero, especially with the amount of skill she had fighting Bucky. Or maybe she worked with SHIELD. Either way, this was actually _not_ the worse thing to happen to him tonight. Probably. SHIELD and the Avengers could offer them protection from Hydra and whoever else wanted Bucky, and in return, well, Bucky probably knew some valuable information about their enemies. Surely there could be some sort of a deal made, if they wouldn’t do the right thing and help Bucky.

He had to stop them from killing each other first, though. He ran into the fray.

“Wait, stop! Please! This isn’t what you think it is!”

Bucky caught the woman’s foot and hurled her behind him, did a backflip to dodge more arrows and something that had shot out of the woman’s wrist over to Steve, who he grabbed and pushed him over behind a parked car.

“ _Stay_ ,” he growled before pulling a knife out of his pocket and _slicing an arrow in half in the air_ before charging back at the woman.

When Steve looks back on tonight, he’ll marvel at the way Bucky fought, the dexterity of how he handled weapons and the comfort he had with a knife in his hand. But as it was now, he was too preoccupied planning how to break it up. Would Bucky listen to him if he told him to stop fighting? He could only hope so.

He crouched behind the parked cars, thinking of how silent Bucky moved, and made his way around to Hawkeye, who was perched on a blue jeep fifty feet down the road.

 _Maybe I do have a death wish,_ he thought as he bolted up onto the car and threw himself around Hawkeye’s knees.

“What the fu—”

“Hawkeye! Listen to me, please! He’s been brainwashed, he doesn’t know what he’s doing!”

“Get the fuck off me, kid!” he replied, glaring at him. He kneed Steve in the jaw when he refused to let go and kicked him off the car. He turned back to the fight and aimed his bow right at Bucky. “Stay there and let the grownups do their job.”

Steve landed hard on the pavement and got the wind knocked out of him. He licked the blood off his lip before taking another couple pumps of his inhaler and thought, _fine. If Hawkeye won’t let up, then I’ll just go back to the source._

The source being a hurricane of limbs and weapons between two of the best fighters Steve had ever seen, of course. Steve thought back to his earlier comment of needing to be a martial arts expert to bring down the assassin with the metal arm, and retracted his statement. At this point, Steve wasn’t sure if a martial arts expert and an Avenger would be enough. It would be up to Steve to end this, then.

He took his chance when the woman threw something at the metal arm — sparks flew and the arm went limp, allowing the woman to flip backwards to put some space between them, so Steve ran to Bucky.

“Bucky stop!” Steve implored, throwing himself in between the two fighters. He faced Bucky, who wouldn’t look at him and put up his two hands, walking slowly towards him. “They can help us — help you! They’re the good guys, we just need to talk to them, we can work—”

Bucky swung his metal arm down and hit Steve so hard he flew to the side and slammed into the side of a car. He bounced off and hit the ground again, his arm burning and his head aching but that didn’t matter because all of sudden he was aware of Bucky _screaming_ and when Steve looked up, there was electricity spouting out of the arrow in his right hand, enough voltage to finally bring him down.

“Bucky! BUCKY!”

He collapsed on the ground, the arrow rolling out of his limp hand. Steve stumbled, head spinning, because no, no no _no no no NO—_

“Bucky? Bucky! Please Buck, come on, don’t do this,” Steve pleaded as he struggled to push Bucky over onto his back one handed, because for some reason his left arm wasn’t listening to him. Vaguely he was aware of Hawkeye and the woman standing around them, but he didn’t care. He placed his ear on Bucky’s heart held his breath.

“He’s just unconscious. He’ll be fine in about a half hour,” the woman was saying, but Steve didn’t believe it until he heard the telltale _ba-dum, ba-dum_.

Steve squeezed his eyes shut and breathed out. The world spun around him when he sat back up because, oh right, he smashed his head into a car. He touched his temple and yep, he was bleeding. That didn’t matter, though. Bucky had been physically exerting himself with two bullet wounds — who knew how much that exacerbated his injuries.

“Do you really know this man? The Winter Soldier. Master assassin. There are barely even people who believe he _exists_ and you’re telling me that you’re buddies with him?” Hawkeye asked him as the woman called in for backup. “Who even are you, anyway?”

The Winter Soldier. The agents back at his apartment called him that too, so it must be his code name. Well, at least they didn’t seem to plan on killing him yet. Steve probably only had until backup arrived to convince them that Bucky should stay alive.

“My name is Steve Rogers, and his name is Sergeant James Barnes. He went MIA on October 3rd, in Kamdesh, Afghanistan—”

“Kamdesh,” the woman interrupted, typing on her phone. “That was bloody.”

“It was.” Steve went on impatiently, “He was kidnapped by Hydra and brainwashed—”

“Hydra?” Hawkeye cut in this time. “Are you sure?”

“I think the four dead Hydra agents in my apartment were a pretty big clue,” Steve snapped back, before realizing the implication. “Which they were looking for him — more of them will probably show up there. You have to send SHIELD agents or something to go protect the people in my building. There are innocent lives at risk!”

They looked at each other.

“Where’s your apartment?” she asked. Steve told her, and she radioed in to dispatch more SHIELD agents there. He could only hope that they got there before Jessie or his seventy-year-old landlord discovered the bodies.

“There was also — I interrupted his mission, there was a mother and a child, um, she looked Middle Eastern and wore a burnt orange hijab and had a brown coat, the child looked to be only about two years or maybe a little younger, I didn’t get a good look. But they’re still alive, or at least he didn’t kill them, there should be people looking for them too.”

“I’m just come right out and say it: you have pretty poor taste in friends.”

“I’m not condoning what he was going to do but they _weren’t his actions_. Or, he wasn’t in control of his actions. They were Hydra’s.”

Both Hawkeye’s and the woman’s eyebrows rose.

“Look, I don’t know what he’s done, I’m sure it’s bad, but Bucky would never work for Hydra or hurt innocent people willingly. They’ve brainwashed him somehow and he doesn’t remember who he is or who I am. All I can ask is that he gets the help he deserves. He served his country proudly for two years before being a POW for five, you guys owe him your help!”

“We don’t know anything about this Barnes guy, or you,” Hawkeye said, crossing his arms.

“His army file says he was killed in Kamdesh,” the woman said, looking up from her phone and showing Hawkeye whatever was on it.

“Missing, not killed,” Steve corrected.

“I mean,” Hawkeye said, glancing between Bucky and the phone, “it certainly _looks_ like him. But who says it really is this Barnes guy? If he can’t remember who he is… looks and voices can all be copied, you know.”

“It’s him,” Steve said with conviction. “I know it is! If you would just let me explain…”

Footsteps echoed down the street as half a dozen SHIELD agents dressed in black combat gear stormed in from both ends. Steve tensed protectively above Bucky, trying to ignore how much their uniforms looked like the Hydra agents’. It didn’t help that they wore helmets with their visors pulled down even though it was the middle of the night. He had no idea what they would do to him now.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” the woman said, kneeling down to handcuff Bucky.

“Be careful!” he warned. “Please,” he added when she looked at him, “he’s been shot twice, once in his right arm and once in his lower right abdomen.”

“Our objective was to capture him, not kill him,” she said went on like he didn’t say anything, though somehow still hitting the nail on the head of Steve’s worries. “He’ll be taken to a facility for the time being where they can monitor his mental and physical health. What happens after that depends on him, and on you.”

Steve clenched his jaw, not missing the subtle threat. “I understand.”

Whoever this woman was, Steve knew that if he crossed her, it would be the last thing he ever did. She kept on par with Bucky when they were fighting and Bucky had obtained those skills through ill-gotten and probably painful means; he could only imagine where and how she got hers.

She gave a small smile and pulled back gracefully and Steve realized he knew even less about her than he thought.

“At least thanks to you, capturing him went easier and caused less property damage than originally planned,” Hawkeye said.

“If you’re thanking me for helping you hurt my friend, _don’t._ ”

Hawkeye shrugged. “Alright, alright, the kid from Brooklyn doesn’t have a sense of humor, I get it.”

Steve stood up and stumbled into a nearby car as the world spun dangerously around him. It killed him to watch them strap Bucky onto a gurney and start to wheel him away, but he’d sooner sprout wings out of his head than let them leave without him. He elbowed an agent out of his way to walk with Bucky. He held onto Bucky’s jacket because, goddammit, he just got Bucky back, he wasn’t going to lose him again.

“You sure you don’t want to be on a gurney too? You look like you’re about to pass out,” Hawkeye called out unhelpfully.

“Are you kidding me? I could do this all day,” Steve retorted even though his legs were shaking and threatening to give out on him.

“There’s a duffle bag over here,” one of the agents in front called out, “it looks like—”

“That’s mine!” Steve said, holding out his working hand. He should probably be more worried about his left arm, but oh well. The agent ignored Steve and held it out to the woman.

“What, do you think he has a grenade in there? Give it to him,” she shrugged, not looking up from her phone.

Steve thanked the agent who didn’t say anything in return, then went back to Bucky. His duffle bag felt much heavier than before, but it was his to bear.

Several unmarked black cars were parked a couple of blocks away. Steve opted to sit in the back of a van with Bucky, and after about fifteen minutes of travel they then got out to find an actual jet was waiting for them. Steve swallowed. He’d known there was no coming back when he left his apartment, but now it was really starting to hit him. Would he be considered a criminal along with Bucky? Bucky already lived a fate worse than death, and now they promised to put him back in a “facility” which Steve knew just to be a kinder word for prison. The woman said what happened to Bucky was based on his actions and on Steve’s, so Steve took that as he had to both convince both SHIELD _and_ Bucky (who didn’t actually know he was Bucky) that Bucky was a victim, and that the Winter Soldier was forced against his will to commit acts of violence for Hydra.

No pressure, though.

They locked the gurney down in the jet and made Steve sit too, which was just as well as he got awful motion sickness, and his concussion was not helping. He sat across from the woman and Hawkeye and to the left of three other agents. Two more piloted the jet and the rest stayed behind to do who knows what. He had to put his head between his knees as the jet took off, which reminded him forcibly of the time they went to Coney Island and Bucky made him ride the Cyclone until he threw up. He wondered miserably if he was ever going to get that Bucky back as he watched the blood ooze through his ripped jeans. He didn’t remember specifically scraping his knees, but it probably happened after Hawkeye threw him off that car. _Asshole,_ Steve thought privately.

He couldn’t think like that, though. He couldn’t afford to pine for his old friend when he was right here in front of him, or else he might lose him entirely. Steve didn’t think he could do that again.

They were in the air for a short while, only about twenty-five minutes, before they landed again. He stood up slowly, trying to ignore his concussed head and bruised and broken body, determined to keep going no matter how his bones protested. If he started thinking about how much he hurt, then he’d never move, and then what use would he be to Bucky then?

He stayed by Bucky’s side as they walked onto the roof of a building. Was this the facility? Would they let them be imprisoned together? No one explained anything to him yet — he had no idea where they even _were_ — Hawkeye and the woman opted to use ASL to discuss his fate rather than include him. He had a feeling that he and Bucky wouldn’t be included in much of anything so SHIELD would keep the upper hand in negotiations. Not that there was much of anything for Steve to hold over them in return; they had Bucky which meant they held all the cards. If they hadn’t realized that he would go to the ends of the Earth and back to make sure Bucky was okay, well, then they’d realize it soon enough.

He held tight onto Bucky’s bloodied jacket in the elevator and squinted when the bright light made his head pound. Bucky was too pale and too still on the gurney. The woman said he’d only be unconscious for a half hour and it had been longer than that now, so either she’d been lying (likely) or they gave him something else to keep him out while they were on the jet (also likely). The elevator stopped on the 25th floor.

“You two, take him to the second interrogation room and wait for us. We’ll take the Winter Soldier down to the containment area,” the woman said.

“I’m not leaving him,” Steve protested, very much aware of the five armed agents around him. “I promised I’d stay with him so I am.”

“We’ll keep him unconscious. Won’t even notice you’re gone!”

Steve opened his mouth to argue, but the redheaded woman cut him off.

“You’re no use to him dead, Rogers. I suggest you follow those agents down to the interrogation room.”

Steve stifled his instinct to fight back. He knew he lost this battle, and it wouldn’t help Bucky to keep arguing. He glanced down to Bucky for a moment. “What will happen to him?”

“We’ll talk to him after we talk to you. But right now we have to make sure he’s taken care of properly. And that means medical assistance. Go.

He looked between them. They hadn’t done anything too terrible to Bucky yet, sure — he didn’t think fighting him in the alleyway really counted since Bucky fought back — but who knows what will happen when he’s out of Steve’s sight? He swallowed down his panic of leaving Bucky and his fear that Bucky be gone when he does.

“Make sure they take good care of him,” Steve said and allowed himself to be led off the elevator.

“Basement level 4,” he heard Hawkeye say as he watched the doors slide shut and taking his best friend away with it. At least he knew what floor they went to.

The SHIELD agent on his right shoved him to get him moving and Steve glared before lifting his head and walking on his own. Further down the hallway they stopped at a door that he opened with a passcode, which Steve definitely did not watch him put in, not at all. If he happened to glance over and see him press 4729 well, that was just an accident. Honest.

The room was plain grey, with two chairs and a table, about what you would expect from an interrogation room. It did have a water cooler and a trash can in the corner, so it probably wasn’t used for the hardiest of criminals. The agent who had shoved him earlier did it again to get Steve in, oh, he got it now — Bucky was the Winter Soldier who worked for Hydra and Steve defended him, so they thought he was Hydra. He knew what happened next.

He turned to them. “Fellas,” he nodded.

One agent ripped the duffle of his shoulder and kicked it into a corner of the room while the other pushed him down into a chair where they proceeded to handcuff his arms and legs to none too gently. His broken arm _throbbed_ in protest to being moved and he bit his tongue to keep from crying out. He let out a breath before straightening his back and held his chin up, keeping a thousand yard stare.

“Nazi _scum_ ,” one snarled before backhanding Steve so hard across the face he would have fallen out of the chair if he hadn’t been strapped in. He choked back a yelp — it jostled his arm and whipped his neck around and honestly, they could have just fucking set him on fire to achieve the same feeling. His head swam from the hit and he saw stars, face tingling painfully in what was sure going to be a fine bruise.

He swallowed the blood in his mouth and pulled his head back up. He could handle anything they could deal him. He had survived bullies before; he would do it again.

“Do you even know who he _is_? What your precious Winter Soldier has _done_? How many _innocent lives_ he’s taken?”

Steve didn’t speak.

“Well, you son of a bitch? You shits are usually so proud of your body count, now you wanna keep quiet? Huh? _Answer me_!” he shouted and slapped Steve again.

He might have blacked out for a second from the pain that ripped through him, head spinning and body screaming and just because he’d spent a good portion of his life in fights didn’t mean it made now more fun to bear. He blinked sluggishly, trying to make the room stop moving and fighting to stay conscious. He couldn’t pass out — them being up here meant that they weren’t with Bucky.

He spit out the blood this time, coughing a little, and forced himself to sit back up, breathing harshly through the pain.

The second agent bent down to be eyelevel with Steve. It didn’t matter if the helmet he wore hid his eyes — he could still feel the heat of his hatred through the visor.

“You’re a worthless piece of shit, you know that? Doesn’t matter if you think this hurts or not, it’s nothing to what the Black Widow will do to you. Even then it will be too good for you.”

He spat on Steve’s face, who paid it little mind because Black Widow? _The_ Black Widow? _That_ was the redheaded woman with Hawkeye? Oh man, there were only a few rumors about the infamous Black Widow that Steve was privy to, but that did explain her fighting skills. Steve didn’t know how he felt about this information, although she seemed strangely sort of on his side for the time being, regardless of the death threats. Or maybe that was just the concussion talking. As it was, she didn’t come off as hostile or wanting to cause Bucky harm. (Probably. It was hard for Steve to get a read on her.) If that was good or bad, his head hurt too much to give it much thought

“Yeah, that’s right. You’re in for a real treat, buddy. Maybe if you’re lucky, she’ll kill you when she’s done,” the one who hit him, or Steve took to referring to him, Agent #1 said. He grinned.

What generic white guy SHIELD Agents #1 and #2 didn’t know was that it didn’t matter, in the end, how good or how painful Black Widow’s information gathering techniques were. Steve was going to tell them everything and she knew it.

“You know, most people shit themselves when they know the Widow’s gonna be questioning them,” Agent #2 spoke up. “Maybe he’s already given up.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. Hydra’s nothin’ but fuckin’ pieces of shit cowards.”

They laughed. Steve glared resolutely across the room.

“Maybe he’s just dumb. Can’t be much use information-wise if there’s nothing in his head to begin with,” Agent #2 suggested.

“Now that’d be a real shame. Still, he was with the Winter Soldier, you’d think he’d know _something._ ”

“Fuck, man, it doesn’t really matter in the end. Do you think they’ll let us have him when they’re done? I’ve been missing kicking real Hydra ass. I mean, he’s not really a substitute for the monster they took downstairs, but—”

“You wanna shut up?” Steve finally said.

“The fuck did you just say?” Agent #1 asked.

“I told you to shut up. I know that understanding can get lost sometimes from your ears and that thing between ‘em you call a brain, but I know you try your best.”

Steve might have actually blacked out this time for a minute or five. He was still trying to blink himself back to full consciousness when the door slid open.

“Whoa! The _hell_ is going on here?!”

Steve spat out more blood and coughed and even though he felt like he was being burned alive and thousands of needles were stabbing into the side of his face and arm, he heaved himself up. Even though his left eye was swelling up and moving his bruised throat stole what little breath he had left, he forced his back straight and his chin up.

“What part of ‘wait for us’ escaped your understanding?” Black Widow demanded, crossing her arms and blocking the door.

The two agents might have been taller than her, but her presence dominated the entire room.

“Black Widow, ma’am, we were just—”

“Just what? Handcuffed an innocent civilian to a chair and started beating him?” Hawkeye asked incredulously. He kneeled in front of him and snapped his fingers in front of Steve’s face. “Hey, hey kid. Rogers! You with me?”

“’m fine,” Steve gritted out through clenched, bloody teeth. “Could do this all day.”

“Yeah, sure you could,” he mocked, undoing the cuffs on Steve’s wrists and ankles. He snapped his fingers in front of Steve’s face again. “Hey, focus, kid. How many fingers am I holding up?”

Steve blinked hard at Hawkeye’s raised hand. “Three?”

“One, actually. Close enough.”

“With respect, sir, ma’am, he was with the Winter Soldier, we believed he was Hydra, not — not a _civilian_ ,” Agent #1 said. (To be honest, Steve wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two anymore, if he hadn’t learned their voices. Those he was not going to forget for a long, long time.)

“So you took it upon yourself to start the interrogation? If I had wanted amateurs I would have gone to the zoo and grabbed a couple of monkeys,” Black Widow bit back disdainfully.

Agent #2 was right: people do shit themselves when she questions them.

“…and stop calling me kid,” Steve added too late to the conversation since he was concentrating on enunciating everything clearly. “I’m twenty-six.”

“Whatever, bro. Respect your elders,” he said before stabbing something into Steve’s thigh and this time he did let out a grunt of surprise. “That should help, at least.”

“What’d you jus’ do?!”

“Pain killer. One of the best. Doesn’t even make you sleepy. No, I can’t deal you more as that is highly unethical and SHIELD doesn’t really like it when resources go missing—”

“You just jeopardized this entire investigation and harmed an unarmed civilian in the progress,” Black Widow cut across. “This is some of the sloppiest work I have seen in a long time.”

“We — we apologize sincerely, ma’am, sir, we should have waited, we’re sorry—”

“We should probably get him a doctor,” Hawkeye said, grabbing him a cup of water from the water cooler. Maybe that was the real reason it was in here. “Here.”

“I’m fine,” Steve insisted. “I can take a hit.” He swirled the water in his mouth then spit it back into the cup. A tooth came out.

“Right, ’cause that’s fine,” Hawkeye said, grabbing the cup. He wrinkled his nose, but shrugged and tossed it into the garbage can. “Eh, I’ve seen worse.” He grabbed him another cup.

“You two are dismissed,” Black Widow ordered. “You will be thankful to be stuck with desk duty and will be lucky if his medical bills don’t come out of your paychecks. Now get out of my sight.”

“Yes ma’am,” they chorused and hastily exited. The door locked behind them with a _snik_ and they were alone in the room.

Steve touched his tongue around his mouth. “Don’t worry, I think that was one of the fake ones anyway.”

“Something tells me you get hit in the face a lot,” Hawkeye said before he pulled out some bandages and dabbed at his forehead, before he started creating a makeshift splint and sling for his broken left arm. Steve briefly wondered about the many pockets he had, but was distracted from thinking about it any further by the pain.

“Well,” Steve began eventually. The painkiller was finally kicking in and it dulled the throbbing of his head, and, let’s be honest, the rest of his body. He felt dizzy and exhausted in the way that it would take at least a month to sleep this off, but he figured that he might as well get this show on the road, since the sooner he convinced them about Bucky the sooner he’d would see him again. He absentmindedly wiped away the blood on his face. His head had bled a lot from where he hit it on the car. “What do you want to know?”

“Why didn’t you tell them you weren’t Hydra?” Black Widow asked as she sat the chair across from Steve.

“I still say we should get him to a doctor.”

Steve raised his eyebrows in surprise and ignored Hawkeye. “The truth will come out eventually. I doubt they would have believed me, anyway.” He shrugged his right arm and added, “And, well, it’s either this or they take it out on Bucky.”

Hawkeye let out a low whistle and hopped onto the table to sit, having finished the makeshift splint. “You sure are loyal to someone we aren’t even sure is this Barnes guy.”

“It’s him.”

“I’m just saying, we don’t know for sure. Even DNA might not confirm it. I mean, according to his record he’s dead! _You_ buried him! We’ll have to dig up the coffin and then it just gets messy—”

Steve closed his eyes briefly and lowered his head. “Don’t bother,” he said quietly.

“Don’t bother? Of course we have to bother to check if he’s not buried underground.”

Steve was suddenly aware how cold he was. No, not cold. Numb.

“He’s not.”

“Right, cause you’re convinced he was missing. You know if we open the casket and find his body this is gonna get really complicated, right? I mean I _guess_ somebody could have switched the corpse, but if he’s a clone, or undead I mean that shit stinks, both literally and figuratively. Of course—”

“There’s nothing in the casket except his left arm.”

Hawkeye shut his mouth with a click. “Oh.”

“I wasn’t—” Steve let out a deep, tired sigh and started again. He spoke to the floor. “He was always there for me, you know? It was hard to believe… I mean, after everything… I knew him more years than I hadn’t and I was just supposed to accept he was gone? Like that? They explained what happened to him, how he was brave and pushed another soldier out of the way and I was supposed to be proud he died a _hero_. He didn’t need to die to be a hero. He already was.”

He paused, trying to think of how to tell the next part. He’d only ever explained this one other time and he may have been a little drunk. Or a lot drunk, really, but that was just semantics.

“I wasn’t supposed to know,” he said, looking up and smiling ruefully. “It was supposed to be a closed casket funeral. Something quick and cheap, just to get the body in the ground, but I couldn’t… I don’t know. I couldn’t accept he was gone. I thought seeing his — his body might make it more real.”

He looked away.

“But there wasn’t a body. Only his left arm,” Black Widow finished for him.

God, he remembered it so _vividly._

They sat in silence for a moment. They let him gather his thoughts.

“Long story short,” Steve continued, pulling himself together, “I tried to get something done about finding the rest of him. He was never found, they never planned on finding him, and the US Army Department threatened to have me kicked out of the building on multiple occasions.”

“Yikes. That… really sucks, kid. I’m sorry.”

Steve stared down at his hands; the fatigue and ache in his bones settling in like an old lover. He was so tired of “I’m sorry’s” and pitying looks and people looking at him like he was going to break or lose it. He was tired of all the inaction. Nobody did anything, they let Hydra take him, and they had let Bucky be tortured and brainwashed and forced to kill.

No — that wasn’t fair. Hydra must have been there, waiting, and grabbed Bucky in the confusion of the attack. They weren’t ever going to let anyone find him. Steve shouldn’t blame Bucky’s unit or the US Army for something they couldn’t have controlled or predicted would happen. He should blame Hydra.

“Even when I had nothing I had Bucky,” he said quietly, the old longing rearing its ugly head. “And now—”

The weight of his words dropped in his stomach and his eyes widened with sudden realization. Steve sat back up despite his body’s protests and squared his jaw.

“And now, all he has is me. You’re damn right I’m loyal to him, because right now, I’m the only one who knows the truth. If it’s us against the world, then so be it. We promised we’d always look after each other and I’m not gonna back out now, not now when he needs me the most.”

No one said anything for a while. Black Widow kept her gaze on him, evaluating everything. He looked back steadily.

“How about you start from the beginning of this evening,” she finally said. “How did you get pulled into this mess?” 

“Yeah, I wanna hear this. I want to know how he managed to stop the Winter Soldier from an assassination when we couldn’t.”

“You guys were there?”

“That’s classified,” they said in unison. Steve raised an unimpressed eyebrow but the mood shifted into something a little less heavy and he felt like he could breath again. Ironic, since the first thing his story entailed was Bucky choking him. He pulled off his scarf and showing off the handprint bruise. That got a wince of sympathy from Hawkeye and even Black Widow pursed her lips. Naturally, after that, they interrupted nearly every other sentence.

“ _Paint_?” Hawkeye burst out. “I can’t believe this shit. He stopped strangling you to death because he got _paint_ on his _goggles_? I don’t believe it.”

Steve told him to get the mask out of his duffle bag.

“I don’t fucking believe it,” he said while holding the mask with paint smears on it.

“Maybe… well, isn’t smell the most closely linked with memory out of all the senses? I painted all the time — maybe the smell of it jogged something.”

Hawkeye looked at Black Widow who looked at the mask. She put on the impression of being relaxed, but Steve wasn’t sure if she ever relaxed. “It’s possible. Unlikely, but possible.”

Then,

“He just sat down in your apartment?!”

“I thought it was weird too.”

“Well, don’t look at me. It _is_ weird.”

Then,

“Let me get this straight. You patched up this guy, this _assassin_ — who tried to kill you and some woman and child, remember — you sat him down, comforted him, and patched up his bullet wounds.”

“It’s not my place to judge who gets to bleed out on my floor and who gets help. He should be judged by a jury of his peers. No one should have the power to decide life and death like that, especially not me.”

“This — my hearing aids aren’t fucking up, right? This is actually coming out of his mouth?”

“Besides, I didn’t want my seventy year old landlord to have had to clean out the bloodstains. That would’ve just been rude.”

They stared at him.

Then,

“He’s really stuck on this you being in the alley thing.”

“I know, but that’s because I don’t think he wasn’t remembering me being in _that_ specific alley. It was some other alley, because after I patched him up he said ‘you had him on the ropes.’ I always said that to Bucky after… after he bailed me out of some of the fights I got into didn’t end so well for me.”

“No kidding. You look like you couldn’t fight your way out of a wet paper bag.”

“So Bucky had to bail me out a few times. That’s beside the point.”

“Blocking their punches with your head isn’t fighting!”

“I had them on the ropes!”

“Except you didn’t!”

“Clint _._ ”

“Right, so because he said this phrase you suddenly thought that it might be your long lost dead pal. Go on.”

And,

“You know, you should be a motivational speaker.”

“ _Clint._ ”

“I’m just saying!”

“Regardless, I think Bucky wanting to end his life rather than going back there is a pretty good indication of this being against his will.”

“It could be.”

“And then I took the gun away and took off his mask. And it — it really _was_ Bucky. I said his name and he asked me ‘who the hell is Bucky?’ But he knew me. He _knows_ me. He just doesn’t remember me. Or himself. Yet.”

“When do the Hydra agents come in?”

“Just then, actually. The burst in the door, I yelled at them saying they would never get Bucky back, they tried to kill me but Bucky killed them all instead, then he literally threw me over his shoulder and jumped out the window. If it weren’t Bucky, he wouldn’t have protected me. Eventually we stopped and kept walking, which of course set off my asthma again.”  
  
“Your poor lungs. They’ve been through so much tonight,” Hawkeye said. He might have meant it sincerely, but it came off as patronizing. Steve threw him a look.

“I’d forgotten my inhaler. I always forgot that stupid thing, but Bucky would always remember for me. He remembered it for me this time too.”

“This is where we come in, right?”

“Yeah, thanks for that exploding arrow, by the way.”

“Just doing my job.”

“Yeah, well, I recognized you and realized that this actually _wasn’t_ the worse thing to happen to us tonight. I figured that you guys could help us. Help _him_.”

Silence reigned. Hawkeye eventually signed something to Black Widow and Steve really wished he could read sign language. There had been rumors that Hawkeye had been deafened in a fight, and judging by the hearing aids and the ASL, the rumors were true.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Black Widow said. “I’ve seen those brainwashed kill their families, lovers, friends… whoever they’re told to kill, they kill. Not only did he not kill his targets, but he also didn’t kill the person who saw him, either. What makes you so special?”

“I… don’t know,” he answered honestly. She had a knack of asking things that threw him through a loop. “I mean, I’m just a kid from Brooklyn. Bucky was always the strong one. I’m sure he gave Hydra hell every step of the way.”

She leaned back in her chair. Steve had the sensation of being dissected.

“I think it’s time for us to go talk to the Winter Soldier.”

Steve stood up and instantly regretted it. Hawkeye caught him before hit the floor, at least.

“Maybe _Black Widow_ and I should go talk to the Winter Soldier. _You_ should go to the infirmary.”

“I’m fine,” he said, pushing Hawkeye away and reaching for his stuff. “No, I’m going to see Bucky. I just stood up too fast. I’m fine. I’m _fine._ Let’s go.”

To make his point completely clear that there was no way they were going to talk to Bucky without him, he hefted his duffle on his good shoulder and punched in the code that Agent #2 had entered and the doors slid open. “Shall we?”

“How did you—?”

“Those agents weren’t too careful about not letting me see the code,” he explained as they walked to the elevator. “Either they didn’t think I was looking or didn’t care. It doesn’t really matter.”

“People usually underestimate you, huh?” Hawkeye said. He clapped him on his good shoulder. “They usually do with the small ones.”

Steve gave him an unimpressed look. “Big or small, I don’t like bullies. No matter where they come from.” He wrapped the scarf back around his neck to hide the bruise when they entered the elevator.

“Are you ashamed?” Black Widow asked.

Steve looked at her. “No,” he answered, touching his throat. “Bucky will be, though, when he remembers. He’s going to hate himself for what he’s been made to do. I’m just…”

“Prolonging the inevitable?”

Steve huffed a little and smiled sadly. “I guess. Can you blame me?”

The doors slid open and they stepped out. Basement Level 4 was different from Floor 25 in the way that Steve got a chill down to his bones even if the temperature was comfortable. The walls were sleek, dark grey metal and the hallways were lit with harsh fluorescent lights. There were cells along the pathway, ten-by-ten foot squares with a glass wall that faced the hallway, which Steve had to assume doubled as a door, each with its own control panel. Every once in a while a new hallway would branch off, reminding him of some sort of post-apocalyptic beehive setup. More helmet’d SHIELD agents with tasers and guns patrolled along the cells and even though it made Steve’s hackles rise, he refused to show that it bothered him. Some of the cells had occupants and he even recognized a few of them from the news. Every part of him detested that Bucky was currently here in this place, while he got a nice interrogation room and some water. Have they fed him? Was he warm enough? Did they treat his gun wounds? Did they even care? Did _Bucky_ even care?

They came to stop at another door, which needed both a fingerprint and a retinal scan to open, so no hope of Steve breaking Bucky out if need be. Not that Steve was considering it, but it was nice having a backup plan. He hated feeling so helpless in all this, but maybe he could play up that angle to make him more of a sympathetic character. ‘Boohoo, my best friend doesn’t even remember me and we’re both injured please help us’ type thing. It probably wouldn’t get him absolved of everything in Court, but it also couldn’t hurt.

All those thoughts flew out the window when they finally came to Bucky’s cell. He was strapped down to a bed in the middle of the cell, still unconscious, stripped of his jacket, shirt, boots, and his _arm_ , they took his goddamn _arm,_ leaving a gaping metal socket where it should be.

“You took off his _arm_?!” he asked, tearing his gaze away from Bucky to look at them in horror.

“He’s currently a dangerous criminal wanted in several countries. We had to take necessary precautions regarding his containment. You of all people should know how dangerous that arm is,” Black Widow explained.

Steve turned his left side away protectively and stuck out his chin. “Much rather have a broken arm than, what, about 1200 volts of electricity pump through me. And it still doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

The agents guarding the glass wall stepped aside when Black Widow walked up to them. Steve stuck close behind, still not entirely sure they would let him in there with them, but the agents didn’t even look at him. Hawkeye went to the control panel and after punching a few buttons, the glass wall slid from the bottom up. Black Widow and Steve stepped inside, after Steve set his bag near Hawkeye. As soon as they were inside the door shut behind him, though he paid no mind and ran up to Bucky and immediately started tugging at the restraints.

“Get these off him,” he turned to Black Widow. She was standing just inside the room and nodded through the glass to Hawkeye. He punched more buttons and the restraints popped off and disappeared back into the bed.

“Bucky?” he said, trying to wake him up.

“He should wake up in a couple minutes,” Hawkeye said through an intercom. Steve had to assume that everything in the cell was recorded, which was just great.

The cell walls were off white and bare, and he couldn’t see any sort of ventilation system but they had to at least have some air holes. Obviously it was meant for high caliber prisoners who could break through walls; Steve figured the walls and glass were deceptively strong.

Bucky, though, oh Bucky. It looked like someone had actually taken care of the gun shot wounds (the gauze looked fresh, anyway.) His empty shoulder, though, made Steve’s stomach turn. He couldn’t imagine how much that must have hurt — the circuitry must be connected to his brain and nerve endings throughout what was left of his shoulder since he had the full range of motion. Steve had no idea if he could feel anything, if he would wake up and ache because SHIELD had disconnected it. There was intense scarring around where the metal fused with flesh, and Steve couldn’t, he just _couldn’t._

He gently brushed the hair out of his face. How could this have happened? How could they do this to Bucky? Why him? _Why him?!_

Bucky stirred, startling Steve.

“Bucky? Bucky, hey, can you hear me?” he said softly.

His eyes blinked open (they’re blue like Bucky’s because this was Bucky, Bucky was not dead he was lying right in front of him) and locked onto Steve’s. There was no sign of recognition.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” he muttered, slurring just a little as he shook off whatever was keeping him unconscious.

He didn’t move beyond that, as Steve expected he would.

“Can you sit up? How are you feeling?” he asked as he touched his flesh shoulder.

Bucky blinked and twitched a little, glancing down at where his left arm should have been. He didn’t appear to be too upset, though, just furrowed his brow a little. Maybe it didn’t hurt him, then? _“Pain is negligible,”_ Bucky’s voice echoed in his head. Maybe he didn’t have an accurate scale of pain, anymore.

He noticed Black Widow and Steve barely got out “Bucky, wait—” before he jerked up and off the table, throwing his flesh arm in front of Steve. He floundered, losing his balance, since the drugs still hadn’t worn off and his legs couldn’t support him. Steve tried to catch him, but it happened so fast and honestly, Steve probably would have trouble supporting him even if he had been prepared and both arms were fully functional. As it was, they ended up in a heap on the ground, Steve biting his lip to keep back a cry of pain as his arm got jostled when Bucky forcibly moved him backwards into the corner so he was between Steve and the Black Widow.

“Buck, Bucky it’s okay, I promise, you’re safe here,” Steve said, though none of it seemed to get through. Of course, if they had put _Steve_ in a small prison cell and strapped him to a table, he’d probably be distrustful too. Black Widow hadn’t moved, watching Bucky press Steve into the corner and struggle against whatever drugs they had given him.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. She’s not going to hurt you. I’m here, she’s not going to hurt you,” Steve kept repeating, partly for Bucky’s benefit and partly to keep Steve’s mind off the pain of his own body. He kept his hand on Bucky’s right shoulder in attempt to ground him, though it was ignored.

The Winter Soldier and the Black Widow had a silent standoff, the air chilling around them. Steve didn’t stop talking, though; he had to get through to Bucky about the situation. If he tried to attack Black Widow or anyone else, then they wouldn’t help him. Worse, they would separate Steve from him and never let them see each other again.

He hadn’t attacked anyone yet, however, and had only gone on the defensive — to protect Steve. This should prove it, shouldn’t it? That this was really Bucky and he really had been brainwashed?

 _Please, please don’t hurt him anymore, please just **help** him_ , Steve prayed, though he didn’t know to whom.

Black Widow broke their silent standoff and said something in Russian. Steve opened his mouth about to protest that Bucky didn’t know Russian, but then again, he wasn’t supposed to know German either.

This was another conversation he was going to be left out of and he knew it was on purpose. He suspected it was filled with some standard threats, concerning Bucky and Steve’s safety or ability to visit, due to violent behavior or escape attempts. There might have been some offer of a compromise to give them information about Hydra, but who knew. Steve certainly didn’t and he _hated_ it.

She came forward and Bucky tensed, squishing Steve more against the wall. Not that Steve didn’t appreciate the sentiment, but this was uncomfortable and painful.

She said more in Russian and Steve wished he could see Bucky’s face. She leaned against Bucky’s ‘bed’ and waited for a response. Bucky clenched and unclenched his fist, which Steve took that as he was internally debating something.

After a few long moments, he spoke back to her in Russian. What was the evil Russian organization again? The KGB? Did Bucky have contact with Hydra _as well_ as the fucking KGB?

“Thank you for your cooperation,” she said.

Well, whatever he said to her, she seemed pleased. She turned and the glass door opened for her, leaving Steve alone with Bucky.

That — huh. He didn’t expect her to leave them alone in the cell. Though not really ‘alone’, as they were watching outside the wall, but it would take a few seconds for them to get in here should Bucky try to hurt Steve. He wondered what Bucky could have possibly said to let this happen.

“Bucky,” Steve said, tapping his right shoulder. Bucky finally got the message and moved away.

It took Steve a minute or two to be able to function through the pain. He wiped away the sweat and blood on his forehead, well aware he looked like complete shit. But he was here with Bucky. How could he complain?

“Hey,” he said. Bucky was staring at him from the opposite corner. Steve slowly scooted a little closer, though left a good amount of space. As they looked at each other, he realized he had no idea what to say. There was just too much.

“So, I don’t know how much or what exactly they’re going to tell you,” he started. This was the easier part. “But I figure I should explain to you as best I can. I dunno how much you trust me, but I swear on my mother’s grave, I will never lie to you. If I don’t know something, or if I can’t tell you something, I will say that, but I’ll never lie.”

He leaned against the wall, god he was so exhausted. But he had to explain this to Bucky.

“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. You were born on March 10th, 1987. You are twenty-seven years old. You are a Sergeant in the United States Army. You went missing on October 9th, 2009. Today is November 5th, 2014. You’ve been missing for five years.

“You were taken by Hydra. They were the ones who gave you the mission, right? Those agents who tried to hurt us before.”

Bucky glared at Steve, but didn’t offer anything.

“They were bad people. _Really_ bad people. They hurt you and made you hurt other people. That’s the honest truth. Right now we’re with SHIELD. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but they’re the good guys. They try to stop people like Hydra.

“Right now, they think you’re Hydra, that you did what they said willingly. I know you didn’t, Bucky, but that’s what they think, and we have to convince them differently. If only so Hydra doesn’t come back for you. Look, whatever happens now, we have to have some control. It depends on how we act so you can get out of here. Right now, they think you’re dangerous, which is why they locked you in here and took your arm. Basically, we shouldn’t hurt anyone here.”

He thought of Agents #1 and #2. “Well, don’t kill anyone, anyway.”

It was really hard to keep focus. The night must finally be catching up with him.

“I dunno what’s going to happen. I really don’t. I know I want them to realize who you are, and what you’ve gone through, and be able to get our lives back. I know that you deserve better than this.”

His eyelids drooped. Bucky still hadn’t moved or said anything. Steve glanced at his watch. It took a moment for the face to swim into focus, and another moment for the numbers to make sense, but eventually he realized it was 3:12 in the morning, and Steve had officially been up for about twenty hours. Seven hours ago he’d seen Bucky for the first time in over five years. None of this felt real to him. They sat in silence for what could have been ten minutes or an hour.

“You need maintenance,” Bucky said eventually.

Steve was too tired to smile so his face contorted into more of a grimace.

The glass wall slid down and Bucky tensed as Black Widow and Hawkeye walked in.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve murmured, not that it really did anything.

They decided it was finally time to take Steve to the infirmary. Steve protested, of course he did, he wanted to stay with Bucky, but he couldn’t put much effort into it. Part of him didn’t think he could even make it to the infirmary on his feet, but he wouldn’t let himself be wheeled away on a gurney. He had to concede, though. He wasn’t much use to Bucky if he didn’t get treated.

“I’ll be back, Bucky. I promise.”

He wasn’t sure if Bucky believed him, but he would be back. He would not let Bucky down again.

~*~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm agentrainycarter on tumblr!!


End file.
